Tiramisu Cupcakes. Enough Said.

I’ve been using Sunday dinner at my parents’ house as an excuse to test new cupcake recipes. Thankfully, my family are willing participants because otherwise I would be eating A LOT of cupcakes. For Mother’s Day dinner, I wanted to do something special and in line with the fabulous dinner my husband had planned.

I went to all my usual cupcake recipe haunts, but didn’t find just what I was looking for. That’s when I stumbled across Cupcake Project where there are about a million recipes I want to try. I was actually looking for limoncello cupcakes, but then I spotted these.

You start with this recipe for lady fingers. Um, I wanted to eat these so bad when they came out of the oven. And who knew lady fingers were so ridiculously easy to make? Well, my husband the chef claims he did, but whatever. We didn’t all go to culinary school. And he seems to forget that I am the girl who has to look up the directions for boiling eggs.

Next you make the “filling” which is kind of like an easy zabaglione, pour coffee/booze over the cakes to soak them, and whip some cream – assemble as directed and top with cocoa powder and chocolate curls. For as fancy as these look, they are seriously easy to make. I even managed it with two pint sized terrorists running around my house.

Some things I want to remember for remember for next time:

The lady fingers rise A LOT. You don’t need nearly as much in the cups as you think you do. Unless you want to skimp on the yumminess that is the filling and, trust me, you don’t.

The recipe says it makes 12 cupcakes. I really think you could probably get 24 out of it if you’re careful. Either way, you’re going to have a lot of filling left over, so I would consider cutting that part of the recipe in half.

I stabbed the lady finger cakes a couple of times with a fork before pouring on the coffee mixture. And on the advice of my husband, I used marsala wine instead of rum – probably about 1/4 a cup. And for the coffee, I had saved some leftover Starbucks to use. Everyone thought it was espresso (which is traditional) so I think that was a good choice. The recipe calls for 5 teaspoons of liquid on each cake – I’d say 3 is probably fine if you aren’t serving coffee lovers.

I probably also had about twice the whipped cream I needed. It was good stuff, though. I recommend putting a dollop or two on your coffee. Oh, and I think I might have used a whole teaspoon of vanilla because I love it.

These cupcakes were a definite success at Sunday dinner. I don’t think I realized this when I decided to make them, but my my stepmom told me that tiramisu is one of her favorite desserts. And my husband, who generally turns his nose up at it, had TWO. I’ll definitely be making these again.